About Legalwise

Legalwise was established in 2007.

For the past 10 years, we have had the privilege of providing high quality legal services to Canada’s largest corporate legal departments and law firms.

The benefits of using Legalwise include: cost savings, scalability, and improved quality, productivity and turnaround times.

About Outsourcing

Background

The conventional approach to providing legal services has been that legal services would command a premium price, because the expertise required to provide the services cannot be duplicated. The legal landscape is changing rapidly.

As clients become more sophisticated and as technology makes law more transparent, clients are increasingly demanding greater value for money.

There is increasing pressure on corporate legal departments and law firms to reduce costs (particularly fixed costs).

Legalwise offers an alternative by providing outsourced legal services to corporate legal departments and law firms on an hourly basis; with no minimum commitments; and at significantly lower costs.

History

Outsourcing legal work to India began in 1995 in the United States, with a 34-lawyer Dallas-based litigation firm outsourcing some of its legal work. Since then, numerous law firms of varying sizes in the United States and the United Kingdom have outsourced some of their work to lawyers in India.

In 2001, GE Plastics and GE Consumer Finance began outsourcing some of its legal compliance and research work to India. GE is reported to have saved about $2 million in one year by outsourcing legal work to India.

Microsoft is also reported to have outsourced some of its legal work to India; and has said that: "[as] a global company, we are constantly working to improve our ability to serve our customers worldwide in the most cost effective, efficient manner."

DuPont has been an outspoken advocate of outsourcing a portion of its legal work to India.

DuPont is reported to have saved about $8.8 million in legal fees in 2002 alone.

Other companies such as Cisco Systems and Sun Microsystems estimate that outsourcing of legal work has reduced their legal fees by millions of dollars.

Canadian law firms and corporate legal departments stand to benefit from offshore outsourced legal services in the same way as their United States and United Kingdom counterparts have benefited.